Gasly excited about Styrian GP chances from P6 - despite unknowns over race pace

Pierre Gasly’s rich run of form continued as the AlphaTauri driver set the sixth quickest time in Styrian Grand Prix qualifying, but the Frenchman is wary a lack of long run data leaves them heading into the race with some unknowns…

Gasly has been in tremendous form, particularly in qualifying, this season and six in Austria is his sixth top-six start in eight races this season, a record for any driver in the team’s history (including their previous guises).

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And it came after he didn’t even take part in FP2 after Honda spotted an issue with his Power Unit and ultimately fitted a third MGU-K – the last he can take without penalty this season – ahead of final practice and qualifying.

“I’m really pleased, yes, because we lost some ground yesterday not doing FP2, so we had quite a lot of work today to catch up,” said Gasly. “Even with this, we still managed to pull a very strong qualifying, all the way, Q1, Q2 and I managed to qualify for Q3 with only one set in Q2 – which never really happened for us.

“So it was a really, really positive qualifying. And such small gaps, you know? When you look at the top it’s great to be in a position where you’re coming every weekend and you’re in that position, to fight for exciting positions and I’m really excited for tomorrow.”

Gasly will have to rely on the long run data gathered from team mate Yuki Tsunoda after he missed FP2 – but he’s confident that with hard work overnight, he can have a strong result on Sunday.

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“That’s a very good question,” said Gasly, when asked about race pace. “We just have Yuki’s data from yesterday in the long runs so we are going with a bit of unknown into the race tomorrow but we know it’s not going to be easy with the temperature. We know the degradation is quite high, so for sure they’re going to be quite a lot of work.

“There might be some rain I heard, so maybe everything changes. Yes we are like many in the same boat starting with the soft compounds but no I’m confident. I’m going to work well tonight with Yuki’s data and try to understand as much as I can to get ready for tomorrow.”